


Water covers everything in blue

by rosa_himmelblau



Series: The Roadhouse Blues [16]
Category: Wiseguy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-20
Updated: 2020-08-20
Packaged: 2021-03-06 20:01:35
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,347
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26014693
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rosa_himmelblau/pseuds/rosa_himmelblau
Summary: Getting information from Sonny is like a game.But that's OK because Vinnie likes games.
Series: The Roadhouse Blues [16]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1069713
Kudos: 1





	Water covers everything in blue

Thinking about what Sonny "did for a living" led Vinnie to start wondering where he got his money. And once he started thinking about where Sonny's money came from, Vinnie's mind worried it like a puzzle he couldn't solve, thinking about it instead of things he didn't want to think about. He didn't really think about it so much when he was with Sonny, because when he was with Sonny, his mind never had the chance to wander into dark, dangerous places, the spirals it favored the way a scared kid's mind favors monsters hiding under the bed or in the closet. Sonny was daylight, and he always had a direction for Vinnie to go in. It was a lot like when Vinnie was a kid and he made the mistake of telling his mother he was bored.

Except now he was driving bored, counting out-of-state license plates, which was either a very easy game or a very difficult one, depending how you looked at it, since Vinnie wasn't entirely sure which state they were in.

And Sonny was ignoring him, absorbed in the _Wall Street Journal._

"Sonny, where does the money come from?" Vinnie waited, knowing Sonny's answer would be delayed until he turned the page.

Page turn. "Fort Knox."

Vinnie suppressed a laugh.

"I dunno why you're asking me, it's your guys that print it up."

Vinnie didn't bother to hide his laughter at that one. "That's Treasury. I don't think I ever even met a Treasury agent."

"Why, are you low on cash?" Sonny's left hand was reaching for his wallet. He still held the paper in his right, and that was where his attention was really focused.

"No, I'm not low on cash, I'm not asking you where **money** comes from, I'm asking where **your** money comes from."

Sonny had his wallet out, but he wasn't doing anything with it because that would have required both hands, or more concentration, and he wasn't willing to use either. The wallet sat on his thigh. "Mm."

Not much of an answer. Vinnie wasn't sure if Sonny was blowing him off or just not listening to him. He waited, ticking off an Alaska license plate on his mental list of them. Mostly what he saw was Kansas, which made him wonder if they were in Kansas, and made him want to say, _We're not in Kansas anymore._ He was quite positive they weren't in Alaska, anyway.

"Sonny. Where does the money come from?"

"Told you, Fort Knox. Your guys print it up. You should'a had 'em print you some when you were in good with 'em, ‘cause it's too late now."

Yeah, Sonny was blowing him off, playing _I didn't understand the question so my answer doesn't have to make sense._ "You spend money like you've got bottomless pockets, I want to know where it comes from."

No answer. Page turn. "Oh. Yeah."

Which also wasn't an answer. Sonny was jerking him around because he liked to, because it amused him. This game was called, _How many times can I get Vinnie to ask the same question without him blowing his top?_ It was a game Sonny would have played with his younger brother, if he’d had one.

Vinnie did not sigh, did not express exasperation. He could win this game on points, but only if he didn’t argue. "So?"

No answer. Vinnie saw an Illinois license plate; they were definitely not in Illinois. They steered well clear of Illinois, home of Chicago. Well, they didn't drive through Illinois, but Sonny did fly to Chicago, to call to Rudy. He didn't take Vinnie with him. That was all right. Vinnie didn't care about going to Chicago, and he certainly didn't want to talk to Rudy.

Finally another page turn. "So what?"

"Sonny, where does **your** money come from?" _That's it, be more specific, that's the problem._ He thought of that movie where the guy kept getting screwed over by the devil because the wishes he'd sold his soul for didn't exclude things like the girl of his dreams being married to his best friend, or both of them being nuns. "Sonny."

Vinnie didn't need to see Sonny's face to know he was smiling. He knew Vinnie knew what game they were playing. "Switzerland," he said.

"Switzerland? What?"

"Switzerland. You've heard of it, right? It's where they keep the Alps—a bunch of 'em, anyway."

"Of course I've heard of Switzerland, what do you think I’m an idiot?” Sonny didn’t answer that, which was probably a good thing. Vinnie damped down his exasperation. “You've got a Swiss bank account?" _Sonny's got a Swiss bank account? Why didn't I know that?_

"Yeah, I'm sure you know all about Swiss bank accounts, feds probably gave you a whole course in what Swiss bankers will and won't divulge, and numbered accounts, and all that."

"So you have a numbered Swiss bank account." _How did I not know about this?_

"Uh-huh." A long pause. "Pisses you off, doesn't it, that you didn't know that?" A strange sort of taunting affection infected Sonny's voice.

"Yeah, yeah. But that doesn't really answer my question, does it? I mean, you told me where you keep your money, not where it came from."

"You know why Swiss banks are so popular?" Sonny asked. His tone was suddenly energetic, full of interest in the subject.

"Yeah, we learned about that. It takes a major crime to get them to give up any information, gun-running or something like that, and tax evasion's not a crime in Switzerland."

"Right, and if they do give out your information, they can do time for it. It's a very nice system." Sonny talked about banking fondly, the way other people talked about their pets.

"Thanks for the refresher course on Swiss banking laws, but that still doesn't tell me where your money came from in the first place." Vinnie enunciated this last with great precision. _Yeah, because probably I was mumbling before._

"Yeah, yeah, you remember my plan to take Patrice down?"

"Sure, by organizing street punks to rob old ladies—are you seriously trying to tell me we're living off the fives and tens—"

"Are you done?" Sonny interrupted. Vinnie always found that simultaneously funny and annoying as hell, Sonny interrupting him in mid-sentence to ask if he was done. "No, we're not living off that money. Idiot. No, there was more to the plan, stuff you never knew about."

"What does this have to do with anything?" One thing Vinnie knew for sure was that to win this game he could not allow himself to be dragged down pointless detours. The only trouble was, he didn’t know where they were going, so it was hard to tell a detour from a legitimate track.

"Will you quit interrupting me?" Vinnie didn't say anything, letting his silence answer for him. He could see Sonny smiling. "When your guys—"

"Will you quit calling them my guys? Please?"

"You telling me they're not your guys?” Sonny asked. “You're not on the same side?"

"You talk like I'm personally acquainted with everybody who draws a government salary, from the President on down."

"You mean you're not?"

"Shut up."

Sonny laughed. "When Royce was buying his way into witness protection, how many secret accounts did he say Paul had?"

"I don't know, I wasn't part of that end of it. Why?"

Sonny just looked at him for a while, and Vinnie thought about telling him about the anti-depressants he'd been on, the ones he'd reacted badly to—if you wanted to call feeling like everything in his life was perfectly wonderful every second of the day a bad reaction. Vinnie hadn't, not at the time anyway. Whatever it had been, it had scared the hell out of Frank, who flat-out told him he liked him better depressed and bad-tempered than off on his own cloud of imperturbability. Frank had been angry for the both of them, livid about Sid getting witness protection at all, since he never had to testify against anyone and he wasn’t in any danger, but it had bought Vinnie's security, and Vinnie . . . hadn't cared. "You gonna tell me about Royce or what?"

"Sure. I bet your guys were pretty disappointed when they started checking all those accounts—"

"How did you know he told us anything?"

"It's Royce," Sonny answered. "The creep's descended from a long line of rats who'd jump ship at the first sign of stormy weather. My guess is he told your guys about half of the accounts, and saved the rest for himself. You know anything about computer viruses?"

"Not really, do you?" Vinnie was wondering if this was a shaggy dog story. Sonny wasn't above that, answering questions with explanations that weren't about anything, and then ignoring Vinnie when he tried to get something clearer.

"Nah, but one of the girls in the office, her kid brother got in trouble for hacking into his school computer, giving himself and some of his buddies all A's."

"What's this—" Vinnie started, stopped. "Never mind, go on."

"Anyhow," Sonny folded up his paper and tossed it in the backseat, "she tells me about her brother, she needs money to get the kid in a private school, wanted to know if there was any way of working overtime, anything she could do to pick up some extra cash. I told her to bring him in. Then I had him install one of these things I read about, this worm or something, that records keystrokes, tells you everything that's typed on whatever computer it's installed on. After that, keeping track of Sidney was easy, and I got all of Paul's account numbers—the ones he knew about, and the ones only Royce knew about. His last day on earth, I transferred the contents of all but the two smallest accounts into a numbered account I set up for myself. All that money Royce stole just disappeared.” Sonny snapped his fingers as punctuation. “I don't know if Royce ever knew what happened, but I figured even if he saw it was missing, what was he gonna do, tell Paul the money he’d stolen was stolen? Even if he could come up with a way to avoid mentioning his own double cross, just losing Paul's money'd be pretty hard to explain."

 _All of Patrice's money. My God._ It wasn't that money mattered to Vinnie, that it impressed him, but there was a level at which even things that you didn't care about were damn impressive, like watching an Olympic event you didn’t care about. It might mean nothing to you, but still, it was the Olympics. "How much was there?" He tried not to sound reverent, but it wasn't easy. That much money seemed to demand a hushed, respectful tone.

Sonny reached over, ran his hand up backwards through Vinnie's hair, patted his cheek. "None'a your fucking business."

They stopped for lunch in a tiny little town on the Nebraska side of the border between Kansas and Nebraska—apparently they **had** been in Kansas—and Sonny bought a newspaper, though Vinnie couldn't figure what interest Sonny could possibly have in the goings on in a town with a population you could fit in the Royal Diamond with room to spare.

"So what is it you do?" Vinnie asked when they were on their way again.

"About what?"

"About work. You're always telling me you have work to do."

"I **have** work to do. Are you feeling neglected?" Sonny ran his hand through Vinnie's hair again. It was something he did pretty often, an odd but affectionate something, Vinnie thought, since it messed Vinnie's hair up, and he liked Vinnie more . . . kempt than he usually was. _Is kempt even a word?_

"No, I'm not feeling neglected! I’m just—is there some reason I shouldn't know what kind of work you're doing?"

"You mean, is it illegal?" Sonny's tone dared him to say yes.

He hadn't meant that anyway. "No, I mean, is it private?"

"No, it's not private. It's not illegal, either."

 _We're playing this game again?_ "And you're not telling me because . . . ?"

"I'm curious what you think I've been doing."

"You spend all your time on the computer, I figure it's either stocks and commodities, or you're hanging out in chat rooms, picking up girls."

Sonny nodded, but didn't say anything. Vinnie figured he was agreeing about the stocks, not the girls. Virtual girls would not be Sonny's type.

"Would you rather I changed the subject?"

Sonny laughed and threw the newspaper in the backseat with the other one. "Are you really interested in this?"

"It's either this or count license plates," Vinnie answered, wondering if Sonny's mood was good enough for that not to piss him off.

It was. "You know anything about commodities trading?"

"Not really. Enough, I guess. I mean, I’m not confused when you talk about it. But that's not—I don't get it."

"You want me to explain it?"

"No, I mean—I've got a pretty good idea how much money Patrice had, and you've got nearly all of it, and it must be drawing interest, so—what's the point? I also know what we spend, and it’s not that much in spite of the gas prices and the way you tip. Is that really not enough money for you?"

"What's enough money?"

Vinnie shrugged. "More than you can spend in your lifetime."

"'Owing nothing, owning nothing,'" Sonny said softly, and Vinnie knew he was quoting him, but he didn’t follow up on it. "How much is more than I can spend in my lifetime?"

"Yeah, you spend it like water, but still—"

"It's not about spending it," Sonny said. "It's about having it."

"And that's the part I don't get! It sits in a bank on the other side of an ocean—where's the thrill to that?"

"Thrill? Vinnie." Patient. "It's insurance."

"Against what?"

"How many times have I had to bring you home from a bar, so drunk you could barely walk?"

"You're saving up to send me someplace to dry out?" Vinnie asked.

Sonny laughed at that for a long time. "You know, that's not a bad idea. Would you go?” Before Vinnie could answer, he went on, “No, but what happens if you get in a fight in one of those bars, and you get busted?"

Vinnie shook his head. "I don't know, what happens?"

"Well, from what I remember from that time with Sererra, when they arrest you, they take you down to the police station, and they fingerprint you, and they take your picture, and then they check to see if you're just some dumb guy who got in a fight in a bar, or are you secretly Al Capone? They check your fingerprints in the computer system. Your fingerprints on file anyplace, Vinnie?"

"Yeah, I guess—yeah. Probably."

"Yeah, that's what I thought. Only what kind of information are they gonna get on you? The stuff you got busted for when you were in AC? Or will it ring some bells with your guys—who seem to be the ones you're hiding from. If it's that phony criminal record, they'll just fine you, or they'll hold you overnight, and everything'll probably be OK. But if they find out you're a cop—"

"I'm not a cop anymore," Vinnie said softly, and Sonny ignored him.

"That's still probably OK. If they don't decide to contact the guys you used to work for, or if it doesn't say you're supposed to be dead." Sonny paused. "If they looked up mine, it would say I'm supposed to be dead. And then what happens? If I got picked up, are you gonna bust me outta jail? Even if you did, think of the mess. We'd have to leave the country, assuming we could get out."

Sonny's quiet words were giving Vinnie a chill. He felt the way he had back home, when Rudy had been keeping him locked in the house, that claustrophobic, us versus them bunker mentality, when he couldn't figure out if he was part of "us" or "them."

"And the money . . . ?"

"How much money do you think it would take to get the sheriff or whoever to let us go, if you'd gotten busted in that little town we just had lunch in?"

"I don't have any idea."

Sonny sighed. "I don't either. But I bet I've got it."

"You really think you can buy your way out of any situation?"

"You really want to argue with me about that? Before you do, you want to talk to that cop I gave the quarter mil to?"

Vinnie had to admit it was hard to argue with success. "So you're accumulating bribe money?"

"I think of it as security. If anything happens to you, I can buy your way out."

"But you're the one in danger," Vinnie said. "My record probably wouldn't be a problem, you said that yourself."

"I said we don't know whether it would be or not. And you're the one more likely to do something to get yourself picked up. Look at all the times you got pinched when you were in Jersey. Besides, I know that I'm going to be careful, but I got no idea what you're going to do."

Vinnie thought about the times Sonny had been far less than careful, the times they both could have been picked up because their public behavior had been loud and fractious, and the times their private behavior had been loud enough to make it public, and about how different his life was now from when he was in Atlantic City. And how none of that mattered. This was about security, but it was also about control. Sonny couldn’t control Vinnie, but he could make sure that no matter what he did, it didn't drown them both.

 _You could just leave me behind._ Vinnie didn't say it. Sonny wasn't going to do it. He didn't know how, even when he really, really wanted to, and the idea that someone might try to make him give up Vinnie—well, that was about control, too. He wouldn't give Vinnie up if it cost him everything he had—for a second time.

It was a weight on his chest, but somehow it was a comforting weight. "So how much is in this security fund?"

But Sonny didn't answer him.

Sonny had retrieved his Nevada newspaper from the backseat and was reading about . . . whatever people did in Nevada that was considered newsworthy. And Vinnie was thinking again.

Sonny was right about a lot of what he'd said, but he hadn't carried it far enough. If his fingerprints set off any bells in D.C., would they contact Frank?

 _All I have to do is get arrested to see Frank again._ Vinnie kept thinking that, even though he knew it made no sense. All he had to do to see Frank again was call him, and he knew it perfectly well. But that would be a deliberate act. If he got arrested, having Frank show up would be a byproduct. _It wouldn't be my fault. When did I become such a coward, anyway?_ Vinnie pushed that thought out of his mind; he hated thinking about it. And another thing Sonny hadn't thought of—if they contacted Frank, Frank would tell Rudy. It could easily nail down their location and lead Rudy right to them—

Vinnie thought about telling Sonny that, then decided not to. If anything happened, they could get on a plane, be gone before anyone could get to them—

_Are you sure that's what you want?_

Vinnie looked over at Sonny, who had folded up his newspaper and was sitting with his head back, his eyes closed, possibly sleeping.

_Are you sure that's what you want?_

Yeah, that was the question. But it’s what he would do; if anything happened, he’d get Sonny on a plane so they could disappear again. He wouldn’t sell Sonny out a second time, no matter what he wanted.


End file.
